caparisoned, were leading about, whilst others were neighing under the hands of the grooms.  In the part farthest from the dwelling, preparations were making for the feast of the night; and several kids and sheep were being dressed by cooks who were themselves half armed.  Every thing wore a most martial look, though not exactly in the style of the head-quarters of a Christian general; for many of the soldiers were in the most common dress, without shoes, and having more wildness in their air and manner than the Albanians we had before seen.”

On comparing this description, which is itself sufficiently striking, with those which Lord Byron has given of the same scene, both in the letter to his mother, and in the second Canto of Childe Harold, we gain some insight into the process by which imagination elevates, without falsifying, reality, and facts become brightened and refined into poetry.  Ascending from the representation drawn faithfully on the spot by the traveller, to the more fanciful arrangement of the same materials in the letter of the poet, we at length, by one step more, arrive at that consummate, idealised picture, the result of both memory and invention combined, which in the following splendid stanzas is presented to us:—­

      Amidst no common pomp the despot sate,
      While busy preparations shook the court,
      Slaves, eunuchs, soldiers, guests, and santons wait;
      Within, a palace, and without, a fort: 
    Here men of every clime appear to make resort.

      “Richly caparison’d, a ready row
      Of armed horse, and many a warlike store,
      Circled the wide-extending court below;
      Above, strange groups adorn’d the corridore;
      And oft-times through the area’s echoing door
      Some high-capp’d Tartar spurr’d his steed away: 
      The Turk, the Greek, the Albanian, and the Moor,
      Here mingled in their many-hued array,
    While the deep war-drum’s sound announced the close of day.

      “The wild Albanian, kirtled to his knee,
      With shawl-girt head and ornamented gun,
      And gold-embroider’d garments, fair to see;
      The crimson-scarfed men of Macedon;
      The Delhi, with his cap of terror on,
      And crooked glaive; the lively, supple Greek;
      And swarthy Nubia’s mutilated son;
      The bearded Turk that rarely deigns to speak,
    Master of all around—­too potent to be meek,

    “Are mix’d, conspicuous:  some recline in groups,
    Scanning the motley scene that varies round;
    There some grave Moslem to devotion stoops,
    And some that smoke, and some that play, are found;
    Here the Albanian proudly treads the ground;
    Half whispering there the Greek is heard to prate;
    Hark! from the mosque the nightly solemn sound,
    The Muezzin’s call doth shake the minaret,
    There is no god but God!—­to prayer—­lo!  God is great!’”